Punk Rock Is Alive and Well, No Politics Required

Brian King, left, and David Prowse of Japandroids.Credit...Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

By The New York Times

Feb. 3, 2017

The Popcast is hosted by Jon Caramanica, pop music critic for The New York Times. It covers the latest in pop music criticism, trends and news.

Five years ago, two punk rock albums arrived that fans and critics alike considered earthshaking: “Celebration Rock” by the Canadian duo Japandroids and “On the Impossible Past” by the Pennsylvania quartet the Menzingers. The Japandroids’ album appeared to crash land out of nowhere; the Menzingers’ album seemed to bubble up from the underground.

Now both bands have new records out, and a panel of punk experts joined our critic Jon Caramanica to discuss them and the state of rock on the new Popcast including The New York Times pop music reporter Joe Coscarelli, who recently profiled Japandroids, and Dan Ozzi, a writer and editor at Noisey who is the author, with Laura Jane Grace, of “Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout.”

“Near to the Wild Heart of Life” by Japandroids is a more ambitious album for a duo known for its late 1970s-early 1980s pure rock exuberance — a more lyrically focused record that represents the band pushing itself to its outermost limits in terms of songwriting and sound. “After the Party” by the Menzingers, an outfit that specializes in a sort of blue-collar, unflamboyant style, is a contemplation of a new, less frantic phase of life — a record that finds them examining the past as feverishly as they push toward the future.

What do both albums say about the state of rock? That it’s thriving. But the “rock is dead” conversation still has legs, largely because of an idea about indie rock that arose in the early 2000s.

“People tend to associate it with a time and a place,” Mr. Ozzi says, referring to the mid-2000s success of bands like the Shins and Arcade Fire. “So when people think of indie rock, they think of that ‘Garden State’ soundtrack type of rock, even though there’s nothing independent about it. So when people get that in their head, that’s what indie rock was, people mean there’s no more of the Shins-type bands. But if you want to look at independent rock, here are two bands that are on independently run labels” that are flourishing.

But as Mr. Coscarelli points out, “The real excitement in punk and indie rock has been in female bands.”

“That’s the unspoken elephant in the room,” he added, “when we talk about the death of rock ’n’ roll, or how indie rock isn’t in the zeitgeist, or no rock bands are on the charts — in the underground, it’s all women.”

So what stops bands like Hop Along, Dilly Dally or Bully from reaching the next level? Mr. Coscarelli cites the disappearance of rock radio, which still plays a large role in breaking new artists. “Rock fans don’t really stream with the power that hip-hop and R&B fans do,” he said, “and the way the charts are weighted now with streams factored in, rock bands aren’t getting any juice off of that.”

Mr. Ozzi thinks that the internet’s focus on individual personalities has also played a role: “In 1992, we cared about Nirvana, the band. If there was Twitter in 1992, would you follow Krist Novoselic? No, you would follow Kurt Cobain.”

So what personality can kick down the door next? Hayley Williams, the Popcast awaits the new Paramore album.